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Public Financial Management for PRSP - Deutsches Institut für ...

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Stefan Leiderer et al.<br />

The main research question <strong>for</strong> this case study is there<strong>for</strong>e the following:<br />

What are the major constraints in <strong>Public</strong> <strong>Financial</strong> <strong>Management</strong> (PFM) at the<br />

central and local government level <strong>for</strong> implementing the Malawi Poverty<br />

Reduction Strategy (MPRS), particularly in the education and health sectors?<br />

Special attention is paid to the following PFM coordination processes:<br />

— Between central and local government level in general (vertical coordination);<br />

— Between education and health sector ministries and their respective<br />

deconcentrated units (vertical-sectoral coordination);<br />

— Between various administrative units and other institutions at the local<br />

level (horizontal-local coordination).<br />

The study also aims at identifying starting points <strong>for</strong> possible solutions to<br />

overcome these challenges.<br />

3.2 Research approach<br />

The research approach selected <strong>for</strong> this study is mainly qualitative and the<br />

overall research design is a country case study. The rationale behind this<br />

choice is that the interrelations between PRS implementation, decentralisation<br />

and PFM – even PFM as such – are very complex and might take very<br />

different <strong>for</strong>ms in different country contexts. There<strong>for</strong>e, it can be assumed<br />

that meaningful results can only be gained by studying a particular case in<br />

detail. Malawi was identified as an ideal showcase in many aspects, being a<br />

poor sub-Saharan African country. Nevertheless, the overall aim of this study<br />

is to identify typical challenges and to carefully draw generalisations that<br />

could apply to similar processes in other developing countries as well. For<br />

this purpose, it was deemed appropriate to attempt to gain a genuine and<br />

thorough understanding of all aspects and underlying mechanisms of in<strong>for</strong>mal<br />

practices of public financial management, in particular processes of one<br />

specific case rather than trying to paint a broad but shallow picture of the<br />

challenges <strong>for</strong> sound PFM in Malawi. In an ef<strong>for</strong>t to gain such a thorough<br />

understanding, the research was even further narrowed down by concentrating<br />

on PFM in two sectors, namely health and education. Both sectors feature<br />

prominently in Malawi’s <strong>PRSP</strong> and are at the same time considered pilot<br />

sectors <strong>for</strong> its decentralisation policy.<br />

42 German Development <strong>Institut</strong>e

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